I’ve commented many times about wasteful government spending, including Social Security bureaucrats spending $700 thousand to party at a luxury resort, HUD bureaucrats giving huge subsidies for welfare recipients to live in upscale neighborhoods, rampant fraud in the…
Daily Analysis
What If Obama Ran the North Pole?
This is the time of year when it’s good to post some holiday-themed political humor. In prior years, I’ve shared IRS Christmas gifts and presents from Ben Bernanke. But now we have a video. And if you like that video, you’ll probably want to watch Santa complain about…
European Fiscal Agreements Show that Balanced Budget Rules Mean Higher Taxes, not Smaller Government
I have many frustrations in my life, and near the top of the list is the conservative fixation about balancing the budget. This view is very misguided. Red ink isn’t good, but the fiscal problem in America (as well as Europe, Japan, etc) is that the public sector is…
Big Government Causes Crime, the Norwegian Version
I’ve written several times about the foolish War on Drugs, which has been about as misguided and ineffective as the government’s War on Poverty. So when I saw a news report about a couple of Swedes getting busted for smuggling 200-plus kilos of contraband into Norway,…
Federal Court Ruling Ignores the Constitution and Gives More Power to the IRS
The tax code is punitive and corrupt, but the economic damage caused by a bad revenue system is just part of the problem. Thanks to a punitive “worldwide” approach to taxation, we have needless conflicts with other nations, leading the United States to side with…
Der Führer Ist Nicht Happy about the Downgrade
I’ve written a couple of serious posts about the European fiscal crisis, including an explanation of how the problem could be solved and one about the importance of gun ownership in case the pessimists are right and civil society collapses. But something funny would…
Ending American Tax Dollars to the OECD Should Be a Minimal Test of GOP Fiscal Responsibility
I wrote last week about how the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based international bureaucracy, has launched a new campaign to promote class-warfare tax policy. I’ve since learned that the OECD’s effort is even more objectionable than I…
California’s Top-One-Percent Bureaucrats
Every so often (about 362 days per year), I come to the conclusion that government is a racket for the benefit of special interests. Greece would be an example. And if we limit ourselves to the United States, California is probably the poster child for a kleptocracy…
Two Early Thoughts on the Ryan-Wyden Medicare Plan
It’s obviously quite disappointing that Congressman Paul Ryan has teamed up with Senator Ron Wyden, a Democratic from Oregon, to put forth a significantly watered down version of his Medicare reform plan. Ben Domenech of the Heartland Institute and Peter Suderman of…
Economics Reporter from New York Times Has Accidental Encounter with Reality, Learns Nothing
Earlier this year, I wrote about how the person Obama put in charge of Medicare made some very interesting observations about prices, competition, and markets, but then drew exactly the wrong conclusion about what was needed to solve the third-party payer problem in…